People generally are not headed to Branson to spend an hour indoors working with locks and trying to solve their way out of a scenario designed to thwart them at every turn. However, anyone with a little time to kill after a weekend at Table Rock Lake or Silver Dollar City definitely should find time to work in a trip to Escape Code.

It’s hard not to be drawn in with a simple visit to their first-rate website. Booking a room is simple and straightforward with descriptions and promo videos for each scenario offered (currently five room options). Revenge has a room capacity of eight players, but it could probably be done with as few as two. Great signage exists to get you to the facility and parking is abundant. Once you walk in, you will be greeted with a very large lobby area and a friendly staff ready to help you on your way. There is not a ton of seating, but it is very comfortable and you shouldn’t be there long. The only downside is the bathroom – in fact, one member of our team had someone walk in on them in the stall because the door does not latch. Apart from that, things get off to a great start at Escape Code – including what have to be the best and most professionally created pre-room explanation videos we have ever seen. These are the same videos as on their website, so if you can stand to wait, we recommend doing so for the full experience at the facility.

In the case of Revenge, our scenario involved being kidnapped along with another group of people across town. As that might imply, you will begin this room in handcuffs and blindfolds. The blindfolds are only to get you into the room and the handcuff key is the first thing you are tasked with finding, so you won’t be uncomfortable for long… assuming you can find the key. All of the components of this room were in as good a shape as you would expect them to be. Everything worked as it was needed to and the room design felt very much like the boiler room it was purported to be. There is one large element that doesn’t actually do anything in the room that felt a little bit more cheaply produced than the rest, but since you don’t have to interact with it, it is merely decoration. Additionally, this room is designed to have low light so you have flashlights provided to you that work extremely well – no cheap, low beam lights at Escape Code.

Perhaps we missed it (perhaps caused by the early morning drive from Kansas City), but we were not sure where, within the scenario, we were. It was clearly a boiler room in some building, but that was all we could ascertain. It scarcely mattered to us, though, as the storyline drove us through the entire scenario – working towards a goal of escaping from someone very much out to kill you motivates you to work quickly. Escape Code uses great and subtle technology to always keep you aware of this pursuit and drive the experience forward. Every aspect of the room works within the theme and storyline with the tiny exception of needing to crawl between rooms. The experience wouldn’t have been cheapened if that was just a door as opposed to a crawl space. Those with difficulty crawling, take note.

The puzzles themselves were great, forcing us to work with unique elements and often combining things we found in two different areas with directions found in a third area to work out how to move forward. To some this might be frustrating as not all things immediately point you where to use them, but we found that element to be a significant positive. Some facilities that incorporate multiple rooms have you work through room one completely before progressing to room two. That is not the case here and the result was that our team of four players was constantly working with nobody standing around with nothing to do at any point. If we’re going to nitpick on puzzle design, we will say that one very cool and unique element was re-used in the exact same way later in the room. It was extremely cool the first time and then kind of a letdown the second time.

The most important element of escape rooms is often how much fun you had. That will not be a problem in Revenge. Successful escapers will likely feel the rollercoaster that makes good rooms great in Revenge. You’ll get frustrated with yourself at times (in a good way), you’ll feel really smart at times, teamwork is required, and if make that red light turn green at the final door, you will know that you have accomplished something few people are able to do. What more can you ask for from an escape room?